[Sherman]

This (linked) post does an excellent job of showing why structure matters. Any reasonable person would agree that having 20BBs with 30 minutes before the blinds go up is better than having 20BBs with 15 minutes before the blinds go up.

The nice thing about Mr. Snyder's "true M" is that it does take structure into consideration in it's calculation. Most certainly it is more accurate at predicting the number of rounds one has remaining.

However, is this "true M" a good guide? While Mr. Snyder even agrees that calculating it is silly, he does so for different reasons than I propose here. My argument might be best demonstrated by example:

When a good player is told that he has an M of 10, he knows what that means. Yet, he doesn't think, "Gee, I can survive 10 more rounds before blinding out." Rather, he adjusts his play accordingly by IMPLICITLY taking into account how long before the blinds go up, table dynamics, and how many rounds he can play with a reasonable stack of chips.

In other words, good players implicitly know that an M of 10 doesn't mean they have 10 rounds left to play before blinding out. Good players make "mental estimations" of how long they have left to play given their current situation (chip stack, blinds, time left in level, table dynamics, etc.).

M is a simple heuristic to their mental estimation. And it does accurately tell a player his/her ratio of chips to blinds. Good players use this heuristic to adjust their play. It is actually very likely, that good players use M to make some sort of mental calculation that computes their "True M" as Mr. Snyder calls it.

In his article, Mr. Snyder demonstrates that structure matters when calculating M. No reasonable player would disagree. However, it is very likely that reasonable players who are accustom to particular blind structures already make these adjustments mentally.

Sherman